If you can see through the clouds, there's a meteor shower happening tonight in Ireland

Tonight's the night of the annual Perseid meteor showers over Ireland - and like almost every other year, there's cloud cover predicted.

However, if you're in an area that happens to be above the cloud line or if you have a rare patch of open sky, you'll be able to see the Perseids from about midnight until 4AM tonight and tomorrow. The Perseids refer to a regular occurrence of meteorites that appear to come from the Perseus constellation.

You needn't worry about an Armageddon / Deep Impact-type scenario happening, as most of the showers are no bigger than a grain of sand. Not only that, they burn up as they hit the atmosphere at 58 kilometres per second which gives off a shooting stream of light in the sky.